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“We have looked all throughout the market and cannot find anything satisfactory” Since the turn of the twenty-first century, MNHS has REPRODUCING undertaken important textile restoration projects on the first floor to enhance the visitor experience at the Hill TEXTILES House. The library—along with the breakfast room, one of the two rooms on the first floor designed as personal space for the for the family—was the first beneficiary, in 2001. Period roller blinds were installed, lace curtains reproduced, JAMES J. HILL HOUSE and original window seat cushions conserved. Thanks to a generous donation by George and Joan Fischer, new, historically accurate drapes and portieres—curtains that Ann Frisina hang in open doorways—were constructed by a Minne- sota company out of a reproduction silk brocatelle fabric or many people, a house empty of furnishing is woven in France on period looms. The sumptuous textiles difficult to visualize as a home. This can be true in the library serve to maintain privacy and create an inner F for homebuyers today; it is even truer for visitors sanctum. to a historic house. Visitors crossing the threshold into In contrast, the imposing Renaissance Revival main an empty historic house first notice the architecture hall (measuring 100 by 15 feet with 13-foot ceilings) and in general, and then observe details such as beautiful adjoining dining room were intended for public display. hand-carved moldings and stained glass windows. After The rooms dominate the look and feel of the entire first admiring the craftsmanship, however, most visitors want floor.2 Use of carved mahogany furnishings, crystal chan- something more. Furnishings help flesh out the picture to deliers, and matching portieres and drapes in both rooms provide a more intimate reflection of how families lived created a unified look. The space could be reconfigured to within houses and made them homes. fit the needs of events large or small by simply opening or In a grand home, eye-catching textiles such as uphol- closing portieres. The patterns and colors of the textiles stery, rugs, and drapery are among the furnishings added a layer of lavish beauty to the main hall and dining employed to make an impression. The three-story, red room, as well as serving the practical function of blocking stone James J. Hill House at 240 Summit Avenue in St. Paul sunlight to protect furnishings. was no exception. Built in 1891 at the peak of Hill’s career, During the Hill family’s residency, the portieres and the imposing, Romanesque-style house represented his drapes in the main hall and dining room were, by their financial success as a railroad executive and provided an sheer size and number, a dominant feature visible from impressive space for public events as well as a comfort- anywhere on the first floor. After their removal, an impor- able dwelling for his family—wife Mary and their nine tant feature of the overall composition on this floor was children. Hill lived in the 32-room house until his death in lacking. Creating reproduction portieres for the main hall 1916, at age 77. Mary Hill lived in the house until her own and drapes for the dining room, however, was a daunting death in 1921. In accordance with their mother’s wishes, endeavor. Nothing of the original portieres remained. the Hill daughters purchased the property from the estate Again George and Joan Fischer stepped forward, making and donated the home to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and the project financially possible. Minneapolis, which owned the house until 1978, when the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) acquired it to operate ANN FRISINA, MNHS’s textile conservator, holds a master’s de- as a historic house museum. By then, few of the furnishings gree in museum studies from the Fashion Institute of Technology. and textiles from the Hill years remained in the house.1 In her career she has a worked on a broad range of textiles, from large Renaissance tapestries to small pre-Columbian archaeologi- cal fragments. Moving to Minnesota 17 years ago to work at MNHS facing: Sumptuous textiles in the Hill House library were the first gave her the opportunity to focus on the comprehensive textile to be reproduced. The original brocatelle drapes and lace curtain preservation needs of a single institution. can be seen on page 222. Note: the names of George and Joan Fischer were incorrect in the print edition of this article. They have been corrected on this PDF. SUMMER 2017 221 top: Hill House dining room, 1922. bottom left: Hill House hall, 1890, with view of closed portiere at left. bottom right: Charlotte Hill Slade, one of James and Mary’s daughters, in the library, 1905. 222 MINNESOTA HISTORY Terrace Terrace Drawing Room Breakfast Room China Closet Picture Gallery Hall Dining Room Hall Reception Music Terrace Room Room Library Den Terrace Carriage Porch Floor plan of first floor of Hill House. Researching the textile Some research was required to get a better understand- fabric in horizontal bands. Each horizontal band places ing of the type of textile the Hills would have chosen, and the flower in one of three different positions, similar to then to make an informed decision on a suitable design. botanical illustrations drawn for scientific study. Pre- Fortunately, MNHS’s large James J. Hill archival collection sumably, the same color was used in each band of flowers provided necessary documentation: period photos and because their shade in the black-and-white image does Hill’s business correspondence and personal papers.3 In not change markedly. Photo-editing software was used addition, an 1890s Arts and Crafts textile pattern book pro- to enlarge a detail of one of the dining room images in vided the missing information needed to connect archival order to establish the length and width of the repeated evidence with a historically accurate reproduction. pattern in the textile. By comparing the measurements of The James J. Hill archive includes a series of 36 pho- the adjacent molding in the dining room to the adjacent tographs of the Hill House interior taken in 1922, when textile in the image, conservators were able to extrapolate the house passed out of Hill family ownership, that the overall textile design repeat to be approximately 29 visually document how the entire house was decorated. inches high by 20 inches wide. The 1922 photos are not The importance of these 36 images, donated in 1985 by clear enough to reveal how many panels were joined to Gertrude B. Ffolliet, a granddaughter of James and Mary make a single portiere. The photos do show, however, that Hill, cannot be overstated.4 Having photographs that give the portieres were not full enough to fall into folds when an idea of what the textiles looked like, how they were extended; they hung like flat sheets. fabricated, and their role in the household is the next best In addition to photographs, the James J. Hill archive evidence when the actual textile no longer exists. Written contains bills, journals, letters, and even small samples of descriptions that match the textiles in the photographs fabric that document the building and furnishing of 240 can be found in the archival bills, vouchers, and corre- Summit Avenue. After studying the proposals of many spondence dating to the house’s inception. interior design firms, James and Mary Hill hired the pres- The 1922 photographs show that the same fabric was tigious Boston firm Irving and Casson to furnish their new used in both the main hall portieres and the dining room home. Even with professionals on board, the Hills were drapes. One fully closed portiere reveals a large portion of directly involved in making design decisions and select- the fabric’s design. The same species of flower spans the ing the home’s furnishings. An example of this level of SUMMER 2017 223 detail can be found in a letter from James Hill to a dealer who was scouting fabrics in Europe. Hill enclosed a fabric sample to indicate just what he wanted: “The darkest gold not to be any darker than the darkest gold in the sample enclosed and the other shades of gold to be lighter accord- ing to design.”5 The fabric scrap referred to by Hill, no bigger than a thumb, can be found in the Hill archives. He had saved it for later comparison. Correspondence between the design team and the Hills about fabric suitability used generic terms to describe the textiles. For example, a short letter from Irving and Casson to Mary Hill used the term “woolen tapestries”: We send to-day by express, samples of woolen tapestries for covering the large hall and library chairs. Mr. Hill wished us to select something for the chairs, and we have looked all throughout the market and cannot find anything that is entirely satisfactory. We send the best samples for the place that we have found and have marked the ones that we think would be best for your approval.6 Textile historians Deborah Kraak and Philip Sykas examine the reproduction fabric. “Woolen tapestry” was probably a standard industry term used in that era to identify complexly patterned weave structures that created colorful floral designs made of wool. Vouchers (with bills attached) found in the Hill archives specifically described the fabric used for the din- ing room drapes and main hall portieres. The puzzling term “Armitage tapestry” was used to describe both the dining room drapes and the hall portieres, as seen in a voucher written on the letterhead of St. Paul dry goods wholesaler Finch, Van Slyck, Young and Company, dated October 31, 1891.7 Did Armitage refer to a town? A textile mill? A specific design? Or perhaps a person? To answer this question, the MNHS conservator conferred with two textile historians—Deborah Kraak, Philadelphia curatorial consultant, and Philip Sykas of Manchester Metropolitan University in England.